AND: Editorial – A stormy year can be foreseen

We publish an unofficial translation of the latest Editorial by A Nova Democracia:

In an interview on December 25 the statement by João Pedro Stédile, leader of the MST, criticizing the coalition government of opportunism regarding the traditional right reflects the seriousness to which the agrarian-peasant issue has escalated. “We are pissed off due the government’s incompetence,” he said, giving the government an “E (grade)” on the agrarian issue. He explained the unusual tone of the criticism: “It is obvious that, one day or another, this base will mobilize, it will put pressure on, given the government’s ineffectiveness.” His statement comes three months after the squatters of Barro Branco, supported by the League of Poor Peasants (LCP), defeated the horde of 50 heavily armed “Invasão Zero” paramilitaries, in a confrontation in which, despite two peasants and a student supporter was injured by a bullet, the Bolsonarists disbanded and the State’s head of the latifundist paramilitaries who commanded the criminal attempt and other gunmen were also shot.

Stédile, like the entire bureaucratic path that tricks the peasants and the popular masses in general in the reactionary electoral dispute, is concerned with the radicalization of the struggle for land, in particular, with the episodes that express the escalation of a peasant war. Aware that the peasant masses – including the honest peasant leaders under the MST flags – need a consistent and realistic political direction and that the land, as always, can only be conquered through force, Stédile sees himself as having a moral obligation to attack the government because in this situation remaining silent is demoralizing for an organization that raises the banner of “People’s Agrarian Reform”, which is still positive, considering those who have defended this right-wing government, until now. Especially in this scenario where taking part in the peasant struggle means, necessarily and increasingly, defying death and entering into an armed struggle against veritable hordes of paramilitaries, numerous and armed to the teeth and enjoying impunity and the cover of the repressive forces of the old State. On the other hand, everyone knows – including the national leadership of the MST – that the entire economic policy of this government and all previous ones, at least since the beginning of this century, has been based on and centered on primary production for export (commodities), which only increases the flow of capital to agriculture and livestock – consolidating mainly foreign monopoly dominance denationalizing the economy to the extreme, raising the price of land, the increase of big landlord’s paramilitary groups to expel the masses of squatters and repress any struggle for land with massacres of poor rural people. This is what we are seeing right now in Nova Brasilândia, Rondônia, in the Nova Esperança camp, with criminal offensives to evict families, in a completely illegal way through the siege and a real rain of bullets on the people by the Military Police of that State.

In short, the entire policy of the opportunist government, and of those that preceded it, necessarily results in the outbreak of an agrarian war for possession of the land, genocide of the poor peasants, indigenous people and remnants of Quilombolas and a life or death struggle, all the more so when the rural poor are willing to resist and with their combative organization that gives them the ideology, politics and methods of struggle indispensable to face the gangs of Bolsonaro murderers, bribed police officers and brazen coverage of the judiciary, defeat them and conquer the land.

***

The predominance of the latifundium in the economy, supported by the government’s agrarian policy, is also expressed in the strong control that the big landlords leaders of Congress exercise over the government. There is nothing that the opportunist government does that has not been duly agreed with Mr. Arthur Lira, articulator of the interests of the local latifundium oligarchies. The budget, although in law it remains the prerogative of the Executive, has long belonged to the leaders of the Legislature: in December alone, R$ 8.1 billion in extra amendments were paid to the Bolsonarists comically called “moderates” who hegemonize the Congress. This was the price for the government to approve the spending cut package that affects the minimum wage and the Continious Benefit Program’s spendings. It should be noted that the government does not only strengthen the Bolsonaro latifundium by giving them money, it also does so by approving reactionary measures, which without they would not remain in the Palácio do Planalto for even six more months.

Elected with the promise of “sweeping away Bolsonarism” and reestablishing a kind of half-baked caricature of a “social welfare State”, the government, after two years, delivered an economically large-scale government program that obeyed the so-called “neoliberal” recipe. As a result, in politics it created a framework of alliances with the same large-scale parliamentary leaders who effectively governed by Bolsonaro since 2020 – and who continue to govern. In the social sphere, it distributes crumbs, increasingly limited due to economic measures and political alliances. Also because the “moderate” Bolsonarists, who until now have blackmailed and extorted the government that surrenders in the name of its survival, will start to bleed it, with a view to the 2026 presidential elections, when they intend to unify under their own leadership and kick the PT out of the management of the old State. The failure of the PT project prepares the return of Bolsonarism, now under the guise of the “moderates”, that is to say, more cunning, therefore, more dangerous.

***

There is no doubt that all of the country’s fundamental contradictions are sharpening, and will erupt in new storms in the coming year. The growing demand of big landlords for land will launch more and more paramilitary hordes against squatters and poor landless peasants, who are increasingly gathering around the Agrarian Revolution and peasant movements and leaders that do not bend the knee. The peasant war, which until now has been about defending and conquering land, tends to take on new and greater proportions, pointing to the conquest of a New Brazil. In this scenario, the contradiction within the reaction will sharpen about the way to get out of its general crisis of decomposition of its semi-colonial-semifeudal economy with deep repercussions in the political system and the spirit of society. The High Command of the Armed Forces (ACFA), although silent for now due to the delicate immediate situation created, with very little room for maneuver for its blackmailing, without the initiative, knows that such a situation of rural revolutionary conflagration results in the potential collapse of the old order of exploitation of the people and national oppression. ACFA is urged to continue its preventive counter-revolutionary offensive, in the form of military intervention step by step, aggravating the already delicate institutional crisis that has a judiciary that legislates, a legislative that executes the budget and a government that is hostage of the same. Disorder, chaos and deep division and disputes on the hill between the dominant classes of big bourgeoisie and big landlords, servants of imperialism, mainly Yankee, and decomposition of a political system of government that is agonizing and discredited by a large part of public opinion, and rejected especially by the expressive and growing popular mass that systematically boycotts his electoral farce. The popular masses, in turn, particularly in the struggle for land, but also in the cities, little by little, unify around the Agrarian Revolution – and they will unify faster the more they advance with forceful actions against the Bolsonarist hordes, the fascists, the “green chickens” and all the reactionary big landlords. The objective situation is ripe and the subjective conditions, at least to raise the class struggle to a new level, are also in place. It remains, therefore, to agitate the people’s masses in the countryside and in the city, mobilize them and raise the struggle against the fascists, the “green chickens”, all the reactionaries and denounce and unmask the opportunists on duty!